A demand also arose for instruction in civil and canon law, which the existing schools did not supply. This broader learning was provided in the early universities, at first to the dislike of the Church, and sometimes to the annoyance of royal heads. Particular objection was taken to the study of law. An Italian named Vicario (Vacarius) lectured on Justinian at Oxford in 1149. Then he abridged the _Code_ and _Digest_ for his students there. King Stephen forbade him to proceed with his lectures, and prohibited the use of treatises on foreign law, many manuscripts of which were consequently destroyed. But these measures were not very effectual. Within a short time civil law became recognised in the University as a proper subject of study. By 1275, when another Italian jurist named Francesco d’Accorso, a distinguished teacher at Bologna, came to Oxford to lecture, the study of civil law was pursued with the royal favour.[522]
The searcher among old wills cannot fail to be struck with the number of law books in the small private libraries. Sometimes the whole of one of these little collections consists of law books; often there are more books of this kind than of any other. For example, of eighty books bequeathed by Prior Eastry to Christ Church, Canterbury, forty-three were on canon and civil law: of eighty-four books given to Trinity Hall, Cambridge, by the founder, exactly one-half were juridical. A wealthy canon of York left but half a dozen books, all on law. The books bequeathed to Peterborough Abbey by successive abbots were chiefly on law. Many other examples could be recited. There was a reason for this. Friar Bacon, writing in 1271, complained that jurists got all rewards and benefices, while students of theology and philosophy lacked the means of livelihood, could not obtain books, and were unable to pursue their scientific studies. Canonists, even, were only rewarded because of their previous knowledge of civil law: at Oxford three years had to be devoted to the study of civil law before a student could be admitted as bachelor of canon law. Consequently a man of parts, with a leaning towards theological and philosophical learning, took up the study of civil law, with the hope of more easily winning preferment.[523] “Compared with such [legal] lore,” writes Mr. Mullinger, “theological learning became but a sorry recommendation to ecclesiastical preferment; most of the Popes at Avignon had been distinguished by their attainments in a subject which so nearly concerned the temporal interests of the Church; and the civilian and the canonist alike looked down with contempt on the theologian, even as Hagar, to use the comparison of Holcot, despised her barren mistress.”[524] The most casual glance through some pages of monastic records will show how frequent and endless was the litigation in which the Church was engaged, and consequently how useful a knowledge of civil law would be.